With the digital revolution in the world of photography, a lot of new trends are popping up. It isn't only the camera, the pixels and the storage medium. It is also the computer, the processing and the imaging software. Not forgetting to mention the scanner, a printer, multicolour cartridges and photopaper. It is also an online album, a photowallet and photoblogging. Somewhere in this list, everybody seems have to forgotten the issue of it all: a picture. What was once the definition: the ultimate moment? That one little moment of a second which tells the whole story and much more. A picture should tell you how the excitement at the party was, how boring the trip was, what the expression on the face of that little girl was when she saw the mountains for the first time.
And did anyone mention 'light'? Somewhere back in time photography made its appearance in France or England as a technical 'thing' to capture reality. A little later painters started using this technique for their means. Today, more than 150 years later, a similar process seems to be going on, this time on another level. By now, almost everybody knows what photography is. And just because it is so fast and accessible to everyone, it is not directly considered Art. Or so it seems. When visiting recent exhibitions and art fairs, it is really remarkable that 'visual arts' are replacing 'traditional' ones. But the entrance of the real digital level on a larger scale is still to come. Sure, there are online galleries, digital prints but because of the ease of reproduction puts a big question mark above the 'exclusivity' of contemporary photography. Have you ever thought of photoblogs as a form of art ? Never looked upon this part of the WWweb as a contemporary installation of pictureblogging ? I admit that it takes a little change in the way of thinking, but when you define 'Art' as: "the most personal expression of the most personal emotion" then a photoblog is Art. Then a weblog is poetry. Or it can be. Does this make all of these pictures to Art? I really doubt this. But the large scale of presenting pictures makes it even more difficult to separate quality of 'mass'. And this is because the masses' don't have a counterpart to be referred to. Despite all technology everybody seems to have forgotten 'that one little moment of reality'.